CoffeeScript in Ubuntu 11.10

There has been a CoffeeScript package in Ubuntu for a while, but it was too old to be useful. Ubuntu 11.10, however, includes a CoffeeScript package that is reasonably up-to-date.

$ apt-cache policy coffeescript
coffeescript:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 1.1.1-3

So installing CoffeeScript has never been easier!

$ sudo apt-get install coffeescript

That's it!

$ coffee -v
CoffeeScript version 1.1.1

$ coffee
coffee> "Hello, World!"
'Hello, World!'
coffee> i for i in [1..3]
[ 1, 2, 3 ]

Of course, I'm helpless without an Emacs mode for it.

$ cd ~/.emacs.d/vendor
$ git clone git://github.com/defunkt/coffee-mode.git

Now just add this to my Emacs init file

;; Add mode for CoffeeScript
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/vendor/coffee-mode")
(require 'coffee-mode)

and we're ready to edit some CoffeeScript!